A GROTTO Santa claims he was forced to quit after his bosses objected to him dumping his script and letting kids sit on his knee.

Actor Mike Daviot, 55, took the ho-ho-huff at the £5-a-time Edinburgh’s Christmas grotto in the capital’s East Princes Street Gardens, branding it a “cattle-herding” exercise.

He said: “The kids are only getting about a minute in the grotto and if they ask a question which isn’t in the script you are supposed to ignore them. We’re not really meant to converse with the children at all.”

He added he had taken the decision to allow the youngest kids to sit on his knee because that had been promised in the adverts. But he was reprimanded for it.

Organisers yesterday insisted Mike was “brusque” with kids and didn’t even get on with his elves.

And Underbelly, who run the festive attraction, said they had been told by child protection experts that letting kids on Santa’s lap was not appropriate.

A spokesman said: “Mr Daviot was a Bad Santa. He decided to leave of his own accord. However, if he had continued to flout the guidelines, he would have been dismissed and sent back to Lapland.”

Mike hit back: “I became grumpy with the way the thing was run but I wasn’t grumpy with the children.”